The Bowmans Creek Branch

Lehigh Valley Railroad (1887-1963)

Chapter 1: Development of the Railroad

In 1869 the Lehigh Valley Railroad
finished the construction of a 96-mile railroad line along the Susquehanna
River from Wilkes-Barre to Waverly, New York. Called the Pennsylvania and New York
Canal and Railroad Company, the railroad was largely built alongside
the North Branch Extension Canal (1856-1872), which connected the
Wyoming coal field in Luzerne County to a canal system in central
New York to reach the Great Lakes. The canal itself was heavily
damaged in an 1865 flood and was closed in 1872, after which the
company double-tracked the rail line.

But this railroad completely by-passed the rich timber lands of the
North Mountain in Luzerne, Wyoming, and Sullivan counties. Prior
to the early 1890s, pioneer lumber firms along the Bowmans
Creek and Mehoopany Creek lands used splash dams, creek freshets
or wagons to reach mills and local markets.

The absence of a railroad through the North Mountain range plagued
its major landowner, Col. R. Bruce Ricketts, for a quarter of a century,
and blocked his fortune-building from the unbroken forest lands he
had acquired in three counties. Without a railroad, the existing
lumber merchants in Sullivan and Wyoming Counties were limited to
small milling and tanning operations, while the Wyoming Valley mining
industry and growing mid-Atlantic cities clamored for lumber.

In time, however, various interests, under the eye of the Lehigh
Valley Railroad, planned to connect Towanda with Wilkes-Barre by
construction of a substantial railroad through the vast North Mountain
forest. In 1867 the independent Sullivan and Erie Railroad
opened a 24-mile line between Monroeton, five miles from Towanda,
to Bernice, to reach the semi-anthracite mine fields of Bradford
County. This coal had a market in New York State. Monroeton
was connected to Towanda on the Susquehanna River by the Barclay
Railroad, later known as the Susquehanna and New York Railroad, over
which the Lehigh Valley would later have trackage rights. The
Sullivan and Erie had financial difficulties and was reorganized,
after foreclosure in 1874, as the State Line and Sullivan Railroad. In
1884 the State Line and Sullivan Railroad was leased to the Pennsylvania
and New York Canal and Railroad Company.

In 1884 the Loyalsock Railroad, corporately controlled by the Pennsylvania
and New York, was charted to build a 32-mile extension from the State
Lines terminus at Bernice, to Bowmans Creek near Bean
Run (Mountain Springs), which would open up both Lopez and Col. Ricketts North
Mountain lands.
This line opened in 1893, as part of the through line between Wilkes-Barre
and Towanda. There was additional mileage to the State Line
and the Loyalsock lines representing small branches to outlying mill
and resort towns. For example, two of the most important on
the Loyalsock were the 7.75 mile branch connecting Thorndale on the
main track with the lumber town of Lopez, and the 3.85 mile Ganoga
Branch connecting the lumber town of Ricketts with Col. Ricketts
Lake Ganoga resort.

The last important railroad link was the connecting railroad from
Ricketts at North Mountain to Wilkes-Barre on the Susquehanna River. This
link was the Wilkes-Barre and Harveys Lake Railroad. The
Wyoming Valley mining industry centered in Wilkes-Barre had an insatiable
demand for timber to be used for breakers, mine railroad ties, and
support lumber in hundreds of miles of mine tunnels.
The Wyoming Valley also had main-line railroad connections to haul
lumber to Allentown, New York, and Philadelphia markets, where immigration
and industrialization pressures demanded lumber for housing factories.